Movie review: ‘A Ghost Story’ provides an oasis of calm in a sea of quiet chaos

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Jul 10, 2017 at 11:29 AMJul 10, 2017 at 11:29 AM

Ed Symkus More Content Now

What you see may or may not be what you get in “A Ghost Story.” What you get may or not be what you’ve seen ... or heard ... or not heard.

This is not a typical example of what’s going on in today’s movie marketplace. Boasting a low budget, it’s has very few actors or words, and very little music, editing, or plot. But in taking on its themes of time and space and love and death and memories, it’s got plenty of evocative, ethereal atmosphere.

A sweet scene of a young couple in love (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara), scrunched together on a couch, making small talk (some of those few words) leads right into another scene, later that night, while they’re asleep in bed, and are awakened by a loud, creepy, unexplained sound.

That, in turn, leads to very little action going on in dark rooms, accompanied by long silences. In one protracted early sequence, writer-director David Lowery (“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” also starring Affleck and Mara) has the gall to keep the camera on them, in close-up, to only the sounds of light kisses and soft breathing, as they slowly fall asleep.

Suddenly it’s morning, and there’s been a car crash in front of their house. We see only the aftermath of it. We never get the names of the two main characters, but the one Affleck is playing is dead behind the wheel. Ten minutes in, and one of the costars has been killed off. What the heck?

Suddenly we’re in a hospital morgue, where she’s spending time alone with the body, which has been covered by a sheet. There is a long silence. When she finally leaves, the body, still covered by the sheet, but with two dark holes where the eyes should be, sits up, gets off the table, and walks out. No one notices.

He (it?) sees a bright light, but doesn’t follow it, choosing instead to traverse expansive fields and get back to their house, where he proceeds to sit or stand around, silently watching anyone that comes by.

You don’t want to be hungry if you go to this movie. There’s so little sound, if your stomach starts rumbling, everyone will hear it. There are other reasons you don’t want to be hungry. In a unique piece of acting, Mara returns to the now gloomy house and, while the sheeted figure watches, she sinks to the floor and slowly and morosely and silently — except for the clink of her fork on a plate — eats an entire pie that a neighbor has dropped off.

Time passes, she gets on with life, and he stands or sits around watching, always inside the house. An odd moment occurs when he glimpses out a window to the house next door, and sees another sheeted figure. They wave hello. Again, what they heck?

The film soon becomes a tale of time passing by. She packs up and moves out; another family moves in, but there are strange occurrences, and they move out; a group of partygoers moves in, and for the first time there’s a flood of talking, most of it coming from one vociferous, jaded fellow (Will Oldham) who goes on a Woody Allen/universe is expanding-like rant about how everything is meaningless. The house ends up empty and in disrepair. But the sheeted figure never leaves; he witnesses it all.

The film enters Terrence Malick territory: Lots of silence, bursts of nature, non-linear “story.” When a frontier family shows up in a covered wagon and later, when a skyscraping office building appears, you wonder if we’re on the same ground as the suburban home, but at different times. When the sheeted figure sees a realtor showing the home to Affleck and Mara, you think, “Ummm, who exactly is under that sheet?”

What the heck? This is a head scratcher of a movie. But it’s quite poetic and had an unusually comforting effect on me. And right now, I think I’m beginning to think that I think I know what it’s about.